Contemporary Multilingual Arabic and Latin Fonts

Since most documentation and references about the Arabic script stem from the calligraphic methodology, this article will tackle the problem of allocating typographic terms to Arabic type and typography.

29LT Kaff is a contemporary typeface family designed by Pascal Zoghbi of 29Letters (29LT) and Ian Party of Swiss Typefaces, in which the Arabic and Latin letterforms were created simultaneously. Its name is taken from an Arabic word meaning ‘adequate, sufficient, necessary and essential’. Kaff’s family of eight weights (Thin, Ultra Light, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Semi Bold and Black) is designed to be the suitable typeface that answers the need of designers and publishers in most of their typographic projects.Continue Reading →

29LT Zeyn is an elegant, contemporary Arabic and Latin typeface. Each weight contains 900-plus glyphs covering the Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Western European languages. The Arabic set contains an extensive set of ligatures in addition to short and long stylistic sets to give the font an added elegant appeal and feel.

Swatch Corporate Typeface (Swatch CT) is a contemporary multilingual typeface covering all Western and Middle Eastern languages used in countries where Swatch™ is present. Swatch CT will be used from all Swatch branches, dealers, resellers and manufactures.

29Letters and Nuqat are proud to announce HOROUF, the first bilingual (Arabic and Latin) type design competition to take place at the yearly NUQAT Design Conference in Kuwait.

Experienced type designers as well as beginners can submit their Arabic and Latin type designs to an experienced and diverse international and regional jury. The winning fonts will be exhibited and will be presented with choice of being published by 29LT type foundry.

Noor Type is a simplified, hybrid Kufi/Naskh type family in three weights, light, regular, and bold. Its contemporary outlines reflect the new branding strategy for the Noor Bank in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) developed by Wolff Olins, the brand consultancy, in Dubai.

29LT Makina is a revival of an Arabic, Persian and Latin typewriter. “Makina” in Arabic means ‘machine’, which is inspired from the translation of a typewriter from English to Arabic. The type-family contains 3 weights (Light, Regular & Bold) with each containing ligatures, stylistic sets and contextual alternates. Continue Reading →

UA Neo B, originally known as UA Beiruti Modern, and UA Neo N, originally known as UA Neo-Nashki, belong to the first set of type revivals of Unified Arabic first introduced by Nasri Khattar in the 1950s. They belong to the Unified Arabic™ type system that contains a library of eight typefaces, including both print (detached) and cursive (connected) styles. After over 60 years, Mr. Khattar’s daughter, Camille, has entrusted 29Letters with the revival of her father’s fonts to keep them in line with his vision and design approach. Continue Reading →

29LT Massira is a simplified spontaneous handwriting set of fonts based on the casual writings of the Lebanese people and the Ruqaa Arabic calligraphic style. The type-family does not have weights but different styles based on different writing tools. The four styles are: PEN, TIPPEX, LIPSTICK and SPRAY.

Alongside Ben Wittner and Sascha Thoma from eps51, I have giving a bilingual poster design workshop for design students at Weißensee Kunsthochschule BerlinKHB, in Berlin, Germany. The workshop was part of the Right to Left event that took place in Berlin all through November until December.Continue Reading →

The talk and workshop I gave at NUQAT Design Conference, Kuwait 2012, revolved around the topic of reviving traditional Arabic script into contemporary Arabic typefaces, patterns/arabesques and design applications for our everyday life. The traditional is not lost but being redefined.